and there was no fear

This afternoon, I walked alone through the Garden of Eden in Gamboula, Central African Republic. I took my time, going slowly down a dirt path surrounded by exotic tropical fruit trees and lush ground cover. The sun was shining, songs of birds and insects filled the air, a cool breeze was blowing. I could hear children laughing outside the garden as they filled up buckets at the water pump. It was almost too beautiful a place to really exist on earth (I always think that when I'm walking there).

Overall, I felt a calm gratefulness to be alive, to still be feeling the sun on my skin.

Many of you know that I had a miscarriage three weeks ago. Last night, in the middle of the night,a complication arose and I started bleeding. Adam rushed me into town to try to find help, but by that time I didn't have energy left to stand or even sit. So as we waited outside a gate of a French doctor, I was lying on the ground on my back, still bleeding. My hands and legs felt light.

I have often wondered how I'll feel when it comes to the moment of dying. Will I be afraid? Is it possible that at that point, the love of God will overwhelm me and all my fears and doubts will subside? It seems like in normal everyday life it's impossible to shake completely free of worries, doubts, fears. What if this happens? What about that? But I wondered how I might feel if really faced with the end of my life here.

Lying on my back under that dark sky, looking up at billions of stars, I realized that this could be it. Miles away from anywhere I could get a blood transfusion. Nobody there who actually could halt what was happening to me. Nobody, humanly speaking.

But I looked up at the stars and thought of Abraham, so long ago, looking up at the stars. About God promising him that his offspring would be as numerous as the stars he gazed at in that vast expanse. I'm one of those children. One of them, looking for a city whose builder and maker is God.

And I remembered Psalm 23: even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

The French doctor in Berberati couldn't help us. So we headed out to the missionary run hospital in another town. Many words came to my mind in the hour or two that followed, as Adam drove me along the long, bumpy road to the hospital in Gamboula.

The Lord is my Shepherd.
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. And I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish. Neither shall anyone pluck them out of my hands.

And I did not feel afraid. I even felt a strange sense of happiness coming over me as I lay in the back of the truck, looking out the window at the stars all along that road. I knew I was hearing the voice of the good Shepherd, and that I belong to Him. I was at peace. Thank you, Jesus.

It won't be the last valley I walk through in this life...but it is good to know that I will never walk alone. And that perfect love really does cast out all fear.

happy independence day

We celebrated the fourth of July by wearing homemade crowns and taking pictures in them. When John announced, "Look, I'm the KING!" I realized that maybe, making crowns to celebrate the fact that our country was becoming independent from "the crown" was maybe a little inappropriate. But alas, making crowns was as far as my creativity could stretch for the moment (if you look at photos from our other holidays, you will see that crowns are a common theme).

how the garden grows

We live in the tropics, and lots of beautiful things grow here. Beautiful plants, animals and birds.

Plenty of food grows all on its own--like fruit trees and other wild plants. And also, pretty much everyone gardens. When I tell people that most Americans don't have fields, they usually respond in shock, "How do they survive then?" Here, a person has a garden to grow food for themselves, plus food that they can sell to earn a little extra money. If the average person doesn't have a garden, they are going to probably have serious problems and lack of food.

We decided to plant a large garden, too. Here is the space when we were still getting it cleared out and beginning to plant things:

A neighbor helped us out a lot in getting the garden started.

Then, we and the Zubots planted lots of things (and Tishik helped).

Well, Elliot (and Sam, too, most of the time) are actually better at destroying the garden than giving constructive aid. For example, of the dozen or so tomatoes that have appeared on my plants, only 2 have made it to full ripeness; the others have been picked prematurely by the two smallest boys. Thankfully, we just got a door put into our fence, which deters not only small boys from also goats and pigs from invading our garden.

Our garden also produces tons of wild spinach, a delicious green that spreads like crazy and grows really fast. We love it!

So far, a few of our "experimental" vegetable plantings--like bean varieties grown in the U.S.--are doing well. We have had a failed crop of sweet corn. We have also heard from an experienced botanist here that other things we planted (just to see if they will grow!) will probably get eaten by bugs--summer squash, watermelon, etc. But, we are also growing things that are tried and true staple crops here: manioc, local corn, tomatoes, peppers, peanuts, okra and lots of papaya trees.

I can't wait to see what we get to harvest! So far, we are already eating plenty of green beans (mostly greasy cutshorts from seeds that the NC Huntleys gave us--yum!)

I thought it was pretty how one of my squash plants grew over and around this tree trunk in the middle of our garden. There's a bright yellow flower right on top of the tree, and others along the vine, so I'm expecting to see some squash soon!

the past month, in pictures

Since I haven't had a chance to blog much lately, I decided I'd do a summary of our last month in pictures so you can see what we've been up to.

Adam really enjoys working with the translators; here he is with his two teammates, and another visiting translator.

Here's Adam, John and Sam in Adam's office (aka, closet with a window!) where Adam does his exegesis and teaching.

A couple weekends most months, Adam, Hervé, André and Seraphim have been driving out to Gbaya villages to share the Gospel. The following pictures are of the three guys (minus Adam), the "sound system" of speakers attached to our car battery, and a woman who was baptized by a local pastor after trusting in Jesus.

On Central African Mother's Day, we went to the women's soccer match at the Berbérati stadium. Don't by tricked by the patches of grass on the ground--this IS the stadium!

Here are the boys, and friends, collecting palm nuts. From these nuts, people extract red palm oil, a healthy and tasty oil used for cooking.

We got our kerosene-powered freezer/fridge working for a few days, and we made ice cream. See the happiness! We're going to try to get the fridge running again soon, but now we're able to think of it as a luxury and convenience, realizing it's not actually a necessity.

Here are John and Louisa, writing "L"s. They both love doing school, and often do it together.

Papa and Sam reading

Sam cracked me up one day by loading his plate with gozo (manioc, the staple food here) while I wasn't looking.

A last couple pictures of our sweet boys!

Our Newest Pets

Can you imagine how excited I was yesterday when some boys came by the house with a bunch of adorable baby guinea pigs? Apparently they are quite rare here, but some people raise them. The boys told me the mother had twenty babies in one litter. Honestly, I found that impossible to believe. But, there were a lot of babies in the basket--maybe nine or so?

We chose two of our favorites (both supposedly female) and bought them. I quickly discovered one was a male, so had to get the boys to come back and trade me one out. Much as I love guinea pigs, I am not quite ready to start breeding a raising them.

So, here are our newest little pets, which John has named Turtle (the one with the black head) and Ladybug (the brown-headed one). Aren't they just adorable?!?!? Everything wonderful that I remember about guinea pigs from my youth. The best pets ever.

Sam is 2!

Sam is two now! We had a wonderful time celebrating his birthday on May 31. I think one of the biggest highlights of the day, as far as Sam was concerned, was getting to help make his cake (Read: eating as much of the dough and frosting as he could get away with while mixing!)...and then the great anticipation of waiting all day to eat the cake at his little party in the afternoon.

The Zubots gave Sam balloons, and all the kids had fun with them.

Sam got some presents, too. Here is a pair of socks he got from Grandma. Now he prefers to wear socks every day.

We're thankful to God for Sam's two years of life, and for how he is growing into a fun-loving little boy who loves to talk, to read books, to play with his big brother and to show his feelings with amazingly expressive faces.

The Huntley Preschool has Launched!

The Huntley Family Preschool has officially opened its doors. I know, school is supposed to start in September, but while we were in Bangui we got a lot of fun kid games from "the container" (a vast storage of learning resources), and we got John's early schoolbooks out of storage.

And John was extremely eager to start school. So we decided to begin. Here is my excited learner on his first day of school.

When I talked to Mom on the phone she said that a couple and a half decades ago, I was just as excited to start school, too.